Are You Significant?

My whole life, I was told that we were one of the richest nations on earth, but now I see that we are one of the poorest. It’s like my whole life has been wasted.”

That comment marked one of the saddest and most poignant moments of my life. Here’s the story:

At one point in our life together, my wife, Coleen, and I were foster parents. Over the years we had 19 foster children of various sexes, races, and physical and emotional disabilities. One of those was Michael, who arrived in our home as a 17-year-old refugee from Albania, which was then the most closed and repressive socialist country in the world. Michael had escaped the regime by swimming across a portion of the Adriatic Sea and eventually landing in a U.N. refugee camp in what was then Yugoslavia.

During the time that Michael was in our home, the regime fell. Albania and the country opened up. Michael was able to speak with his parents via a phone in the village where his family lived.

One thing led to another, and a couple of years later, Coleen and I visited his parents in their village in the remote foothills in Albania. We eventually hosted John, Michael’s 80ish father, for a couple of weeks in our home.

Culture shock is too mild a term to describe John’s experiences. For example, Albania at that time did not have a single stoplight in the country because there was no need for one. There were no cars; people walked or traveled in oxcarts. Bringing John to America was like time travel — fast-forwarding him a couple of hundred years. He was overwhelmed and awestruck. The treadmill, for example, was a source of amusement. “Why would somebody walk on it when they could just walk outside? Silly Americans.” Expressways provided a terrifying experience; air conditioning was a wonder.

As we escorted him to the airplane that would take him back to Albania, he thanked us, said goodbye to his son, and then said, “My whole life, I was told that we were one of the richest nations on earth, but now I see that we are one of the poorest. It’s like my whole life has been wasted.”

For years that moment stuck with me like a weight on my heart — every time I thought of it, I felt sad.

But, in recent years I’ve seen it differently. John was wrong. His life wasn’t wasted, unless of course you judge your life solely by the amount of material possessions you’ve accumulated. It is true that the socialist government lied to him for a lifetime, and that those lies narrowed his world and prevented him from seeing opportunities he never had.

But John made the most of the situation in which he found himself. He was the village elder, and helped his villagers survive in a difficult time. He and his wife raised two children and instilled a sound character in them, embedding one with the self-confidence and courage necessary to escape. There was something in John that sought for more, and he instilled that hunger to do more, see more, be more, and accomplish more into his prodigy. He made an impact. He had influence. In John’s world, he was significant.

Understanding Significance

According to Meriam-Webster, significance is defined this way: “the quality of being important: the quality of having notable worth or influence.” Wiktionary sheds this light on it: “extent to which something matters.”

While there is a degree of significance to be achieved though one’s family — John had influence on his family, for example — my focus in this article is on a higher level of significance. Having “notable worth or influence” implies that significance on that level is relatively rare. People take note of it.

Suppose you could lay a foundation of significance with your family, and then reached out to “matter” to a larger world. Suppose you could seek significance in your career and your business.

Just that idea alone would put you in as special category. The sad truth is that very few people seek to be significant to anyone over and above their core family. Most people are content to just get by.

In my work of helping sales forces sell better, for example, I’ve often observed that if you randomly select 20 salespeople and survey them, you’ll find that only one of those 20 have spent $25 of their own money on their own improvement over the course of the year. While salespeople happen to be the professional group with whom I am most familiar, I suspect that salespeople are not unique in their indifference to personal improvement. Probably the same thing could be said about product managers, customer service representatives, social workers, and every other job title.

Gaining significance means, among other things, performing in such a way as to be notable. Notable implies performance above and beyond the average. And that means striving for excellence in your work or business. Striving for excellence means continually improving yourself. You can’t become excellent unless you do better — forever. And doing better means sharpening the saw and continually improving. So, being indifferent to personal improvement is to deny an attraction to significance.

Why Bother?

There are compelling reasons to strive for significance in your career and your business. One is the exceptional positive impact on people. As we noted in the definition, significance is defined by its impact on others. To be “notable” requires people to notice. To be “important”